In my quest to make holidays meaningful for my family, I find myself researching age appropriate crafts for my kids to make as gifts and decorations.

I found this easy Valentine’s Day craft on Surviving Motherhood and made one with my 4-year old. She loved it and plays with it and it is a cute reminder of our love for each other.

While I love the idea of passing out Valentine’s cards as a way to take a moment to show each and every person your love and appreciation, I am not a fan of the cookie-cutter 30-per-box punch-out cards (now with candy!) that are commonplace today. Here a few creative alternatives:

When we <a href="#6"><strong>started having kids</strong></a>, my husband and I agreed that it was very important that they be bilingual. At the time, we thought it would be simple. My husband is a native Spanish speaker and I am fairly fluent as well. We thought it would be simple. We thought they would just absorb the language simply by being exposed to it within the home. And it did happen that way to a degree, especially when they were very young. As they grew, and especially when they started school, I started to notice a few things that made me realize that a more concerted effort was needed in able for them to achieve fluency. First, I started (unknowingly) speaking more English to them. As their vocabulary grew and topics of conversation became more detailed and profound, I found that I couldn’t express myself as well in Spanish as in English. Secondly, we have no Spanish speaking family and very few Spanish speaking friends nearby, so the only Spanish that they were hearing came from my husband and me. All of their peers spoke English and they started to prefer speaking English to us, even in response to a question asked in Spanish. I soon realized that in order for us to be able to give them this gift of bilingualism we would need to make a much greater effort for <a name="6"><strong>more exposure</strong></a> to Spanish, both in the home and socially. We enrolled them in a Spanish immersion charter school, we started attending mass and other cultural events in Spanish and I made (and continue to make) it a priority to have a wide variety of Spanish language material (books, music, movies, websites) available to them. The following are links to sites that I have found useful (and be sure to check out my absolute favorite site for kids learning Spanish!) BLOGSMommy MaestraSpanglishBabySpanish PlaygroundSpanglish AventurasMultilingual ManiaJugar y ColorearWEBSITES WITH GAMES FOR KIDS IN SPANISHSpanish Language Learning GamesForeign Language Learning for KidsSpanish for KidsClicClicClic <————-THIS ONE IS A PARTICULAR FAVORITE Mi Mundo en Palabras